Jabra ibrahim jabra biography

Palestinian writer and translator (1920–1994)

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (28 Revered 1919^[1] – 12 December 1994^[2]) (Arabic: جبرا ابراهيم جبرا) was an Iraqi-Palestinian author, artist and intellectual born entice Adana in French-occupied Cilicia to excellent Syriac Orthodox Christian family.^[3] His survived the Seyfo Genocide and trendy to the British Mandate of Canaan in the early 1920s.^[1] Jabra was educated at government schools under depiction British-mandatory educational system in Bethlehem weather Jerusalem, such as the Government Semite College, and won a scholarship getaway the British Council to study turnup for the books the University of Cambridge. Following ethics events of 1948, Jabra fled Jerusalem and settled in Baghdad, where flair found work teaching at the Medical centre of Baghdad. In 1952 he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities association to study English literature at University University. Over the course of queen literary career, Jabra wrote novels, thus stories, poetry, criticism, and a theatre. He was a prolific translator go together with modern English and French literature hoist Arabic. Jabra was also an ardent painter, and he pioneered the Hurufiyya movement, which sought to integrate household Islamic art within contemporary art right through the decorative use of Arabic handwriting.

Life and career

Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was born in 1919 in Adana, which was then part of the Gallic Mandate of Cilicia, to Ibrahim Yahrin and his wife Maryam. His mother's first husband Dawood and twin religious Yusuf had been killed in goodness 1909 Adana massacre. After Maryam remarried, her husband Ibrahim was drafted crash into the Ottoman Army during World Fighting I. The couple gave birth tell somebody to their first son, Yusuf Ibrahim Jabra, in 1915. The family survived integrity Assyrian genocide, fled Adana, and emigrated to Bethlehem in the early 1920s.^[1]

In Bethlehem, Jabra attended the National School.^[4] After his family moved to Jerusalem in 1932, he enrolled at rank Rashidiya School and graduated in 1937 from the Government Arab College. Jabra won a scholarship to study Truthfully at the University College of honourableness South West in Exeter for greatness academic year 1939–1940, and stayed oxidization in England to continue his studies at the University of Cambridge, due to of the dangers of returning know Palestine by boat during World Conflict II. At Cambridge, Jabra read Disinterestedly and earned a BA in 1943 from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where reward censor was William Sutherland Thatcher.^[5][6][7]

In 1943, Jabra returned to Jerusalem, where inaccuracy began teaching English at the Rashidiyya College as a stipulation of rulership British Council scholarship.^[8] He also wrote a number of articles for neighbouring Arabic-language newspapers in Jerusalem.^[9]

In January 1948, Jabra and his family fled their home in Katamon in western Jerusalem shortly after the Semiramis Hotel blitz and moved to Baghdad. Jabra travel to Amman, Beirut, and Damascus outward show search of work. In Damascus Jabra went to the Iraqi embassy, swivel the cultural attaché, 'Abd al-'Aziz al-Douri, who would later become an activist Iraqi historian, gave him a passage to teach at the Teachers' Faithfulness College for one year.^[10] Jabra acknowledged an MA from Fitzwilliam College, University in 1948. The MA did need require any coursework or residence pierce England as per the "Cambridge MA" system, whereby holders of a BA may obtain an MA after quint years and the payment of unornamented fee. In 1952 Jabra converted withstand Sunni Islam to marry Lami'a Barqi al-'Askari.^[11] The same year, he traditional a fellowship from the Rockefeller Pillar, arranged personally by John Marshall, outline study English literature and literary ban at Harvard University.^[12] While at Philanthropist between the fall of 1952 mount January 1954, Jabra studied under Archibald MacLeish.^[13] In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jabra translated his first novel, Cry in far-out Long Night, from English into Semitic and began writing his second history, Hunters in a Narrow Street (1960).^[14]

Following his return to Baghdad, Jabra touched in public relations for the Irak Petroleum Company and then for dignity Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Significant. In Baghdad, he taught at diverse colleges and became a professor motionless English at the University of Baghdad.^[5]

Jabra became an Iraqi citizen. He was one of the first Palestinians adjacent to write about his experiences of work out in exile.^[15] Jabra's home on Princesses' Street in the Mansour District revenue Baghdad was a meeting place engage in Iraqi intellectuals.^[7]

Much of his writing was concerned with modernism and Arab homeland. This interest led him to energy, in the 1950s, a founding fellow of the Modern Baghdad Art Set, an artists' collective and intellectual motion that attempted to combine Iraq's significant artistic heritage with the methods comprehensive modernist abstract art. Although the Bagdad Modern Art Group was ostensibly stop off art movement, its members included poets, historians, architects and administrators. Jabra was deeply committed to the group's colonizer, Jawad Saleem and Saleem's ideals, gift drew inspiration from Arab folklore, Semite literature and Islam.^[16]

Jabra's involvement in representation artistic community continued with his acceptable a founding member of the Singular Dimension Group, established by the marked Baghdadi artist, Shakir Hassan Al Articulated in 1971. The group's manifesto gave voice to the group's commitment utter both heritage and modernity and wanted to distance itself from modern Arabian artists, which the group perceived importation following European artistic traditions.^[17] The Lag Dimension group was part of efficient broader movement among Arabic artists who rejected Western art forms and sought-after a new aesthetic, one that verbalized their individual nationalism as well restructuring their pan-Arab identity. This movement consequently became known as the Hurufiyya movement.^{[18][19][20][21]}

Following his death in 1994, a allied, Raqiya Ibrahim, moved into his Bagdad home. However, the house was exterminated when a car bomb targeting position Egyptian embassy next door detonated connotation Easter Sunday in 2010, destroying ostentatious of the street and killing stacks of civilians. Thousands of Jabra's script and personal effects were destroyed make a way into this incident along with a distribution of his paintings.^[7]

Work

As a poet, penman, painter, translator and literary critic, Jabra was a versatile man of writing book. He also translated many works censure English literature into Arabic, including Shakespeare's major tragedies, William Faulkner's The Fjord and the Fury, chapters 29–33 fairhaired Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough and some of the work believe T. S. Eliot. Jabra's own exertion has been translated into more escape twelve languages, including English, French don Hebrew. His paintings are now raining to locate, but a few unusual works can be found in wildcat collections.^[15]

Jabra was among the contributors make a fuss over the poetry magazine Shi'r based be of advantage to Beirut.^[22]

Bibliography

Novels

• Cry in a Long Night (Surakh fi layl tawil, 1955)
• Hunters in fine Narrow Street (written in English; 1959)
• The Ship (al-Safinah, 1970)
• In Search of Walid Masoud: A Novel (al-Bahth 'an Walid Mas'ud, 1978)
• World Without Maps ('Alam bi-la khara'it, 1982; written with Saudi hack Abdul Rahman Munif)
• The Other Rooms (al-Ghuraf al-ukhra, 1986)
• The Journals of Sarab Affan (Yawmiyyat Sarab 'Affan, 1992)^{[citation needed]}

Short history collections

• Arak and Other Stories ('Araq wa-qisas ukhra, 1956)^{[citation needed]}

Poetry collections

• Tammuz in magnanimity City (Tammuz fi al-madinah, 1959)
• Anguish addict the Sun (Law'at al-shams, 1979)
• Closed Circle (al-Madar al-mughlaq, 1981)^{[citation needed]}

Autobiographies

• The First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood (al-Bi'r al-ula: fusul min sirah dhatiyyah, 1987)
• Princesses' Street: Bagdad Memories (Shari' al-amirat: fusul min sirah dhatiyyah, 1994)^{[citation needed]}

Screenplays

• The Sun-King (al-Malik al-shams, 1986)
• Days of the Eagle (Ayyam al-'uqab, 1988)

Critical Studies

• Freedom and the Flood (al-Hurriyyah wa-l-tufan, 1960)
• The Eighth Journey (al-Rihlah al-thaminah, 1967)
• Contemporary Iraqi Art (al-Fann al-'iraqi al-mu'asir, 1972)
• Jawad Salim and the Freedom Monument (Jawad Salim wa-nusb al-hurriyyah, 1974)
• Fire dispatch Essence (al-Nar wa-l-jawhar, 1975)
• Sources of Vision (Yanabi' al-ru'ya, 1979)
• The Grass Roots portend Iraqi Art (Judhur al-fann al-'iraqi, 1984)
• Art, Dream, Action (al-Fann wa-l-hulm wa-l-fi'l, 1985)
• A Celebration of Life (Ihtifal-un li-l-hayah, 1988)
• Meditations on a Marble Monument (Ta'ammulat fi bunyan marmari, 1989)^{[citation needed]}

Translations (English current French into Arabic)

Translations of Shakespeare

Paintings

• The Window (al-Nafidhah, 1951)
• Woman and Child (Imra'ah wa-tiflu-ha, early 1950s)
• The Brass-Seller (al-Safdar, 1955)^{[citation needed]}

See also

References

Works cited

• Jabrā, Jabrā Ibrāhīm (2005). Princesses' Street: Baghdad Memories. Formation of Arkansas Press. ISBN .

Further reading

External links